I'm not sure we can say that's categorically true. Both have hidden depths, the Simpsons is prima facie a show about a goofy guy and his family and friends and Futurama is prima facie a sci-fi show about a goofy guy and his family and friends, one of whom is a crazy space lobster, but while Futurama has lots of in-jokes and hidden references, these are mostly related to the fields of science and sci-fi culture. The Simpsons has just as many clever references, but they're pretty evently spread spread over popular culture, film noir, politics, history, classic art and writing, etc. I'm not sure that spotting an obscure Kirk reference shows a keener intellect than spotting an obscure Austen reference, for instance (and I say this as someone who loves both shows and doesn't have a clear favourite, even though I "get" more of the Futurama references).
Ditto, I was under the impression he left the company in an official capacity several years ago, ostensibly to pursue his charity work, and that he was just a major shareholder now. I haven't seen comments on him having anything to do with running the company for years, either - it's all about Ballmer.
Do you seriously believe these decisions are down to designers? They're driven by metrics - unfortunately the incredibly annoying flashy crap almost always works better than (i.e. better return on investment) the subtle, toned-down look, and so that's what we're stuck with. The second you decide to put ads on your site (unless you're going to get draconian and risk scaring away your market) you open yourself up to the whims of an accountant with an analytics report who doesn't know the first thing about design, just that flashy brings in the bucks.
If it's all about choice, why are you advocating walled gardens? Or can't Apple offer the choice of an alternative phone OS without walling their users in?
To say they don't make much from the App store is to completely ignore the fact that it's their main marketing tool now for all iDevices. Every advert is about what you can do with app X or Y with very little focus on the hardware.
Flex is a big one for me, having to support a CMS that utilises this - this means I can actually do full out of hours support entirely from my phone (or it will, if Froyo hurries up with an official release and HTC hurry up with integrating and releasing it).
People always cite this as a reason Flash could never work on phones, and it seems like an incredibly trivial thing to overcome, either by having an overlay on the screen when Flash is detected which causes the finger to act as a cursor, or just using the physical directional pad almost every phone as to do the same thing.
Well the mobile web thing is still pretty new. The first step is getting a version of Flash that doesn't kill the handset - after that the UI issues are much easier to overcome (albeit you'd probably need to serve up a mobile specific version of your movie). I don't particularly want to see a resurgence of Flash, but the crappy UI isn't really down to Adobe so much as the designers/developers who aren't really targeting these devices.
I think the one thing Android and IOS users can both definitely agree on is that Flash entirely does suck. The difference is in how you deal with that suck (either letting your users have the option to use something that everyone acknowledges sucks but might be needed in some instances, or not).
It sounds like the "expected" part is more to do with which phones are "expected" to get Android 2.2 (Froyo) - that seems like the only pre-requisite to this new version of Flash. Unfortunately a lot of handsets are still waiting on Froyo. I don't think it's even officially made it to Nexus 1 yet, or hadn't last I heard - and HTC are holding off on any announcements until they're sure they can get it working with their other phones, having learned from their mistake with previous versions and the Hero (announcing a firm date which kept slipping as they ran into issues integrating Sense UI with the newer Android version and receiving some backlash from the community as a result).
It's pretty moot anyway - I guess average users won't care because they probably don't even understand what Flash actually is, and power users or people who are in the unenviable position of actually needing flash will have already made their choice (either that they can live without it, or that they need to own a platform that allows it, hobbled as the experience may be). I don't see a newer version swaying people in sufficient numbers to change anyone's position.
Some might say that just point blank denying the user access is not a great user experience either. We all know Flash is an awful technology that deserves to die soon and painfully, if you're unfortunate enough to be in the position that you have to use it, might there not be a case to say it would be better to at least have the option, even if Apple flag up a big disclaimer saying "the page you're about to use contains Flash which is not designed for mobile usage and has known usability and performance issues, continue? Y/N", or bury it somewhere in a menu so you have to really need it before you go enable it.
Hmm, not sure your metrics are spot on. If we're measuring website hits as an indicator of usage, it would probably decrease usage stats if Flash took twice as long to load, since people would have less time to browse and less inclinaion to do so - and that's assuming Flash is any slower to load, I've not seen any suggestion that it is - okay it can be bloated but so can JavaScript, it's usually performance when it's running (i.e. already loaded) that most people have a problem with. The main issue with loading is that the Flash we see is often being served by ad companies who don't care that the connection is dog slow and the page takes twice as long to load as a result - but that would still be the case if they were serving JavaScript or even static images.
I doubt it's a valid point - Adobe would do pretty much anything to have Flash on the iDevices. Note the tone of the ads they took out were more in the vein of "work with us" rather than "screw you guys". I wouldn't say Adobe are running scared just because Apple won't play ball, but if they're ignoring the possibility that their technology will become redundant then they're blind indeed. It would take more than just Apple being against them (or else it would take a massive shift in the uptake of Apple products), but if a few more big players scent blood in the air, it could well be their undoing, so it's in their interests to ensure they remain as entrenched as possible on as many platforms as they can right now, even if it did mean ignoring the mean things Apple said about them in the past.
I've been using the HTC Desire for just about a month now and I can tell you that it's incredibly simple to use and the UI is fantastic (HTC's Sense UI is really nice, adding widgets and shortcuts to customise my various home screens). My GF is not technical at all, she is an iPhone user and she has no problems using my HTC, while I like the fact that I can dig deeper and do some more advanced stuff when I need to (and so far I've not done too much besides replace the standard input method with Swype, switch out some of the basic apps, add tethering and some useful bluetooth functionality and installed a directory browser so I can upload SNES/GBA roms to work with the emulator app). I get the impression I've barely scratched the surface of what I could do, even without rooting my phone, but if I didn't want to take that route the basic phone experience is still very nice.
I get the impression from your post that you've not actually used the Android OS, you just heard that it allows more user control and automatically assumed that meant complex and horrible user experience. I can say it's anything but. Personally I would love the iPhone to be set up the same way, simple for the average user but with the ability to do more right out of the box, I think that would help drive forward development and innovation on both platforms - surely if Google (the company of perpetual betas and a web interface from 1998) can get this right then Apple (who have always prided themselves on offering a better user experience) can have a decent stab at it?
I use zip files all the time on my phone, they're useful for all kinds of reasons, such as to get around email servers aggresively blocking things like.js files, or when someone needs to preserve a directory hierarchy in a bunch of emailed files (i.e. they need me to debug some web code). Some devices might put all downloads into one directory, in which case if someone's emailing me fifty icons to approve, I'd rather they sent them as a zip that I can easily locate and move to my desired directory than have me wade through my entire downloads directory looking for the contents of the email.
I won't always have a PC to hand so it's nice to be able to handle those things from my phone (even if it's not always the first choice in terms of usability for doing so). Your logic also seems a bit circular - you're saying people asking for this functionality are just living in the past, at the same time you say you can't imagine anyone asking for this functionality - just because you can't envisage a use-case, doesn't mean nobody else can (for me this is far more useful than the ability to make video calls from my phone, for instance, but I recognise that some people might want to be able to do that, as redundant as it might seem in the digital communication age).
Congratulations on missing the point that Apple bring lashings of user experience (shiny looks, one of the first workable mobile touch-screen interfaces, an easy to use app store) but that's often at the cost of basic functionality which other devices have offered as standard for years. We can all agree that improvements to the UI are important, but for some people the underlying functionality is more important and that's where Apple are slow to deliver, and often come across as disingenuous when they do (for instance, you'd be forgiven, having read the mainstream media the last few days, for thinking they invented multi-tasking, when not long ago they were busy explaining why it was such a bad idea for mobile devices - they'd get far more good will by just saying, "we were wrong, we've listened to your requests and here's your multi-tasking").
And how's your warranty looking these days? It shouldn't be expected behaviour that you have to invalidate a warranty that you've paid for just to be able to use the device to its full.
And all this ignores that in the last two years, there have only been a tiny handful of times when not having multitasking has annoyed me.
Likely because that's what you're used to. Having only used an Android for a few weeks, I found it frustrating using my GF's iPhone without it over the weekend, so likely the target audience is people who currently use phones with this feature rather than those who are already happy living without it. Having said that, I'll probably encourage her to wait for the update until it's clear there are no drawbacks/kinks to work out (although Apple generally get this right as far as I can tell, I'm just naturally wary of being early-adopter cannon fodder on any device:)
Don't like it? Don't buy it. Some of us quite enjoy the user experience it provides. I'm sure you think we're sheep but we don't care. Just like we bought the product we liked and are happy with that purchase, we're fine with you buying the product you enjoy. So, again, you don't like the iPhone or any other Apple product? Fine. Don't buy it. Go buy something else.
Don't like the opinions of a large group of people on a forum which has a history of supporting open standards and opposing closed standards? Don't read it. Some of us quite enjoy being able to promote openness and discuss products that threaten that when they become ubiquitous enough that their closed practices have a good chance of leading market trends. I'm sure you think we're sheep but we don't care. Just like we read the forum we liked and are happy with that forum, we're fine with you reading a forum you enjoy. So, again, you don't like Slashdot or the Slashdot ethos? Fine. Don't read it. Go read something else.
Actually I'm being facetious, but your argument comes across as don't like what I like? then go away, I don't want to talk to you. In truth I'm more than happy to hear both sides of the argument, so long as one side isn't telling the other they've not right to even speak their mind. A better approach is that we should all question things we disagree with and discuss the pros and cons, and that way we might all reach some kind of a consensus which embiggens us all, instead of just believing whatever corporation X is telling us to believe today.
For the record, I know people who are incredibly happy with the iPhone, I know other people who are disappointed with the lack of features (and these aren't "power users", just regular people who'd like to be able to share ring tones via bluetooth, for example) - what I don't see is Apple spending any time telling the average user what the limitations are, and without that how can anyone make an informed choice? If people choose a device with full disclosure, that's all well and good, but the only way people will get full disclosure is if they read about it online, in discussions like this, which is why it's important that we do ask the questions, and equally important that both sides of the argument put their points across, while it's tremendously counter productive to come here and suggest that the answer is to just go buy something else.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure we can say that's categorically true. Both have hidden depths, the Simpsons is prima facie a show about a goofy guy and his family and friends and Futurama is prima facie a sci-fi show about a goofy guy and his family and friends, one of whom is a crazy space lobster, but while Futurama has lots of in-jokes and hidden references, these are mostly related to the fields of science and sci-fi culture. The Simpsons has just as many clever references, but they're pretty evently spread spread over popular culture, film noir, politics, history, classic art and writing, etc. I'm not sure that spotting an obscure Kirk reference shows a keener intellect than spotting an obscure Austen reference, for instance (and I say this as someone who loves both shows and doesn't have a clear favourite, even though I "get" more of the Futurama references).
Ditto, I was under the impression he left the company in an official capacity several years ago, ostensibly to pursue his charity work, and that he was just a major shareholder now. I haven't seen comments on him having anything to do with running the company for years, either - it's all about Ballmer.
Do you seriously believe these decisions are down to designers? They're driven by metrics - unfortunately the incredibly annoying flashy crap almost always works better than (i.e. better return on investment) the subtle, toned-down look, and so that's what we're stuck with. The second you decide to put ads on your site (unless you're going to get draconian and risk scaring away your market) you open yourself up to the whims of an accountant with an analytics report who doesn't know the first thing about design, just that flashy brings in the bucks.
But doing this to a laptop / desktop?? M$ was not able to pull this carp with IE
That was back when MS were busy playing cod, now they're singing a different tuna and Apple are taking their plaice. Okay, I'm all out.
If it's all about choice, why are you advocating walled gardens? Or can't Apple offer the choice of an alternative phone OS without walling their users in?
To say they don't make much from the App store is to completely ignore the fact that it's their main marketing tool now for all iDevices. Every advert is about what you can do with app X or Y with very little focus on the hardware.
The average Slashdotter is probably not going to stick with the stock device from their ISP though.
Flex is a big one for me, having to support a CMS that utilises this - this means I can actually do full out of hours support entirely from my phone (or it will, if Froyo hurries up with an official release and HTC hurry up with integrating and releasing it).
People always cite this as a reason Flash could never work on phones, and it seems like an incredibly trivial thing to overcome, either by having an overlay on the screen when Flash is detected which causes the finger to act as a cursor, or just using the physical directional pad almost every phone as to do the same thing.
Well the mobile web thing is still pretty new. The first step is getting a version of Flash that doesn't kill the handset - after that the UI issues are much easier to overcome (albeit you'd probably need to serve up a mobile specific version of your movie). I don't particularly want to see a resurgence of Flash, but the crappy UI isn't really down to Adobe so much as the designers/developers who aren't really targeting these devices.
I think the one thing Android and IOS users can both definitely agree on is that Flash entirely does suck. The difference is in how you deal with that suck (either letting your users have the option to use something that everyone acknowledges sucks but might be needed in some instances, or not).
It sounds like the "expected" part is more to do with which phones are "expected" to get Android 2.2 (Froyo) - that seems like the only pre-requisite to this new version of Flash. Unfortunately a lot of handsets are still waiting on Froyo. I don't think it's even officially made it to Nexus 1 yet, or hadn't last I heard - and HTC are holding off on any announcements until they're sure they can get it working with their other phones, having learned from their mistake with previous versions and the Hero (announcing a firm date which kept slipping as they ran into issues integrating Sense UI with the newer Android version and receiving some backlash from the community as a result).
It's pretty moot anyway - I guess average users won't care because they probably don't even understand what Flash actually is, and power users or people who are in the unenviable position of actually needing flash will have already made their choice (either that they can live without it, or that they need to own a platform that allows it, hobbled as the experience may be). I don't see a newer version swaying people in sufficient numbers to change anyone's position.
Some might say that just point blank denying the user access is not a great user experience either. We all know Flash is an awful technology that deserves to die soon and painfully, if you're unfortunate enough to be in the position that you have to use it, might there not be a case to say it would be better to at least have the option, even if Apple flag up a big disclaimer saying "the page you're about to use contains Flash which is not designed for mobile usage and has known usability and performance issues, continue? Y/N", or bury it somewhere in a menu so you have to really need it before you go enable it.
Hmm, not sure your metrics are spot on. If we're measuring website hits as an indicator of usage, it would probably decrease usage stats if Flash took twice as long to load, since people would have less time to browse and less inclinaion to do so - and that's assuming Flash is any slower to load, I've not seen any suggestion that it is - okay it can be bloated but so can JavaScript, it's usually performance when it's running (i.e. already loaded) that most people have a problem with. The main issue with loading is that the Flash we see is often being served by ad companies who don't care that the connection is dog slow and the page takes twice as long to load as a result - but that would still be the case if they were serving JavaScript or even static images.
I doubt it's a valid point - Adobe would do pretty much anything to have Flash on the iDevices. Note the tone of the ads they took out were more in the vein of "work with us" rather than "screw you guys". I wouldn't say Adobe are running scared just because Apple won't play ball, but if they're ignoring the possibility that their technology will become redundant then they're blind indeed. It would take more than just Apple being against them (or else it would take a massive shift in the uptake of Apple products), but if a few more big players scent blood in the air, it could well be their undoing, so it's in their interests to ensure they remain as entrenched as possible on as many platforms as they can right now, even if it did mean ignoring the mean things Apple said about them in the past.
I've been using the HTC Desire for just about a month now and I can tell you that it's incredibly simple to use and the UI is fantastic (HTC's Sense UI is really nice, adding widgets and shortcuts to customise my various home screens). My GF is not technical at all, she is an iPhone user and she has no problems using my HTC, while I like the fact that I can dig deeper and do some more advanced stuff when I need to (and so far I've not done too much besides replace the standard input method with Swype, switch out some of the basic apps, add tethering and some useful bluetooth functionality and installed a directory browser so I can upload SNES/GBA roms to work with the emulator app). I get the impression I've barely scratched the surface of what I could do, even without rooting my phone, but if I didn't want to take that route the basic phone experience is still very nice.
I get the impression from your post that you've not actually used the Android OS, you just heard that it allows more user control and automatically assumed that meant complex and horrible user experience. I can say it's anything but. Personally I would love the iPhone to be set up the same way, simple for the average user but with the ability to do more right out of the box, I think that would help drive forward development and innovation on both platforms - surely if Google (the company of perpetual betas and a web interface from 1998) can get this right then Apple (who have always prided themselves on offering a better user experience) can have a decent stab at it?
I use zip files all the time on my phone, they're useful for all kinds of reasons, such as to get around email servers aggresively blocking things like .js files, or when someone needs to preserve a directory hierarchy in a bunch of emailed files (i.e. they need me to debug some web code). Some devices might put all downloads into one directory, in which case if someone's emailing me fifty icons to approve, I'd rather they sent them as a zip that I can easily locate and move to my desired directory than have me wade through my entire downloads directory looking for the contents of the email.
I won't always have a PC to hand so it's nice to be able to handle those things from my phone (even if it's not always the first choice in terms of usability for doing so). Your logic also seems a bit circular - you're saying people asking for this functionality are just living in the past, at the same time you say you can't imagine anyone asking for this functionality - just because you can't envisage a use-case, doesn't mean nobody else can (for me this is far more useful than the ability to make video calls from my phone, for instance, but I recognise that some people might want to be able to do that, as redundant as it might seem in the digital communication age).
Congratulations on missing the point that Apple bring lashings of user experience (shiny looks, one of the first workable mobile touch-screen interfaces, an easy to use app store) but that's often at the cost of basic functionality which other devices have offered as standard for years. We can all agree that improvements to the UI are important, but for some people the underlying functionality is more important and that's where Apple are slow to deliver, and often come across as disingenuous when they do (for instance, you'd be forgiven, having read the mainstream media the last few days, for thinking they invented multi-tasking, when not long ago they were busy explaining why it was such a bad idea for mobile devices - they'd get far more good will by just saying, "we were wrong, we've listened to your requests and here's your multi-tasking").
And how's your warranty looking these days? It shouldn't be expected behaviour that you have to invalidate a warranty that you've paid for just to be able to use the device to its full.
He said the phone (3G) doesn't support multi-tasking, not him personally.
And all this ignores that in the last two years, there have only been a tiny handful of times when not having multitasking has annoyed me.
Likely because that's what you're used to. Having only used an Android for a few weeks, I found it frustrating using my GF's iPhone without it over the weekend, so likely the target audience is people who currently use phones with this feature rather than those who are already happy living without it. Having said that, I'll probably encourage her to wait for the update until it's clear there are no drawbacks/kinks to work out (although Apple generally get this right as far as I can tell, I'm just naturally wary of being early-adopter cannon fodder on any device :)
No reason it couldn't work over WiFi, where available, though?
I wouldn't be surprised to see increased network traffic in the first few days as people try out the new features, though.
Don't like it? Don't buy it. Some of us quite enjoy the user experience it provides. I'm sure you think we're sheep but we don't care. Just like we bought the product we liked and are happy with that purchase, we're fine with you buying the product you enjoy. So, again, you don't like the iPhone or any other Apple product? Fine. Don't buy it. Go buy something else.
Don't like the opinions of a large group of people on a forum which has a history of supporting open standards and opposing closed standards? Don't read it. Some of us quite enjoy being able to promote openness and discuss products that threaten that when they become ubiquitous enough that their closed practices have a good chance of leading market trends. I'm sure you think we're sheep but we don't care. Just like we read the forum we liked and are happy with that forum, we're fine with you reading a forum you enjoy. So, again, you don't like Slashdot or the Slashdot ethos? Fine. Don't read it. Go read something else.
Actually I'm being facetious, but your argument comes across as don't like what I like? then go away, I don't want to talk to you. In truth I'm more than happy to hear both sides of the argument, so long as one side isn't telling the other they've not right to even speak their mind. A better approach is that we should all question things we disagree with and discuss the pros and cons, and that way we might all reach some kind of a consensus which embiggens us all, instead of just believing whatever corporation X is telling us to believe today.
For the record, I know people who are incredibly happy with the iPhone, I know other people who are disappointed with the lack of features (and these aren't "power users", just regular people who'd like to be able to share ring tones via bluetooth, for example) - what I don't see is Apple spending any time telling the average user what the limitations are, and without that how can anyone make an informed choice? If people choose a device with full disclosure, that's all well and good, but the only way people will get full disclosure is if they read about it online, in discussions like this, which is why it's important that we do ask the questions, and equally important that both sides of the argument put their points across, while it's tremendously counter productive to come here and suggest that the answer is to just go buy something else.